Father Hoecken Monument

Christian Hoecken, a Dutch Jesuit known as the Kickapoo Father for his years among the Kickapoo and Potawatomi in Kansas, made one trip up the Missouri into Dakota, in the summer of 1840, baptizing at Fort Pierre and at Fort Clark in present North Dakota. He meant to return. In June 1851, aboard the steamboat St. Ange with Pierre-Jean De Smet, he nursed passengers through an epidemic most accounts call cholera until it killed him near the mouth of the Little Sioux River; De Smet buried him in a hollowed cottonwood log.

What the plaque says

In commemoration of the missionary priest Father Christian Hoecken, S. J. 1808 - 1851 Who near-by on June 13, 1840, first administered the sacrament of baptism west of the Missouri River in South Dakota. Marked by the State Historical Society 1941

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Verendrye Monument — 0.4 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.
• South Dakota State Capitol — 1.6 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.
• Oahe Dam — 6.7 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.

More markers nearby

• The Stockgrowers Bank of Fort Pierre — steps away
• Fort Pierre — steps away
• Fur Posts — steps away
• Verendrye Hill and Monument — 0.2 mi